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All of AaronF's Comments + Replies

4DirectedEvolution1y
The comment section on this particular post isn't the place for these musings. I'd suggest that, if you're interested in expressing such views, you do so in a separate post or in a shortform.
2tailcalled2y
That's the footnote I mentioned: I think the anti-skunking is more meaningful than this, because it's genuinely a feature of the beer that makes it more suited for the beach, whereas the origin of Corona is more circumstantial. But YMMV.
AaronF3y0

REMOVED

 

In Defense of Twitter's Decision to Ban Trump
AaronF3y-2

REMOVED

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Weird Things About Money
AaronF3y1

Here is Ole Peters: [Puzzle] "Voluntary insurance contracts constitute a puzzle because they increase the expectation value of one party’s wealth, whereas both parties must sign for such contracts to exist [Answer]: Time averages and expectation values differ because wealth changes are non-ergodic." 

Peters again: "Conceptually, its power derives from a new notion of rationality. Many reasonable models of wealth are non-stationary processes. Observables representing wealth then do not have the ergodic property of Section I, and therefore rationality mu... (read more)

What is complexity science? (Not computational complexity theory) How useful is it? What areas is it related to?
AaronF3y1

My basic and primitive understanding (From Taleb Etc.) is that there are a few ideas that are important; such as ergodicity; at least when trading in a complex market and why you should follow Kelly criterion. Also, fat tails etc. 

But when I did the research like you, it seemed quite sparse. 

 

On Suddenly Not Being Able to Work
AaronF3y4

Literature is rife with individual stresses and anxiety, people don't really talk much about ecological stressors. Even if you are resilient, the environment plays a part in productivity.

"During the recent COVID-19 pandemic, traditional (offline) chess tournaments were prohibited and instead held online. We exploit this as a unique setting to assess the impact of moving offline tasks online on the cognitive performance of individuals...Our results suggest that teleworking might have adverse effects on workers performing cognitive tasks. KEY: A ... (read more)

5gjm3y
Here's a link to the paper whose abstract is quoted there [https://www.iza.org/publications/dp/13491/cognitive-performance-in-the-home-office-evidence-from-professional-chess]. Their main reported result is a bit weird: allegedly players aren't more likely to make suboptimal moves in the online tournament, but when they do their suboptimal moves are somewhat worse.
What's the evidence on falling testosteron and sperm counts in men?
AaronF3y-4

Retracted

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4[anonymous]3y
You will run across many orders of magnitude more plastic lechate, pesticide, and herbicide than you will of pharmaceutical estrogens unless you are taking them. They don't even double the quantity excreted by women taking them as contraceptives, so the main exposure route is barely affected.
Tearing down the Chesterton's Fence principle
AaronF3y9

My understanding of CF is that to dismantle it, you first need to come up with a reason why the fence is there. Nearly any reason will do.

Example: Old rule: do not castrate animals.

People just discard this rule as obviously vapid. Yet the question remains, why does the rule exist in the first place? What changed?

If the counterparty can't elucidate "any" reason, well I know the conversation is going to be futile.

I find the rule very helpful.

4DirectedEvolution3y
The central and original case of a good use of Chesterton's Fence is a powerful political figure who chooses to hold off on imposing a radical change on society through military force, because he wants his economists to investigate the current practice for a few years/decades and understand its ramifications first. When we're talking about a small group of individuals experimenting on a local level with a new way of doing things in their private lives, that's a real stretch. Since most of us don't have the ear of our local dictator, it's these non-central cases that we're usually discussing. In such cases, I think the onus is on the reactionary to explain why a given experiment might need extra caution, as much as on the reformer to understand the norm's purpose and explain why it's nevertheless OK to try something new. Investigating norms takes time, and isn't always a good use of it.
Far-Ultraviolet Light in Public Spaces to Fight Pandemic is a Good Idea but Premature
AaronF3y5

While doing my research before buying LED lights, I came across 405 nm light. All he caveats of OP apply. Seems the companies are using hydrogen peroxide vapour.

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5429381/

4Roko3y
A dose of 2.8 kJ /cm^2 is 28 MJ /m^2, so a 100W-luminous-power blue LED would decontaminate 10 square meters (a small room) in 280,000,000/100 = 2.8 million seconds = 30 days. For decontamination to be useful I think it needs to happen inside of 15 minutes. Certainly not multiples of a month. I think we can reject blue light because the required power for rapid decontamination is far in excess of what we can provide.
5Kirby Sikes3y
Wow, I would not have guessed that light within the visible spectrum would have any germicidal action at all (looks like 405 nm light is germicidal at fluences about 10,000 times as high as germidal UVC). This brings up an important point which is that sunlight (UVA, UVB, and apparently visible blue-violet too) is somewhat germicidal, and open air treatment [https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4504358/] during the Spanish Flu had positive patient outcomes, as well as less spread, with nurses and doctors less likely to become infected.
Law school taught me nothing
AaronF3y1

" Fairness " In RED. This seems implausible. Notice. Opportunity to be heard.

I highly doubt you forgot that.